Favourite Hardmode System

[Dangg]

What was your favourite way to activate the hardmode of an encounter? This is NOT about your favourite content or raid instance!!

Ulduar for me.

[Youarefired]

Ulduar was perfect. No raid has been as fun as that once since it was released.


Mimiron's Big Red Button!

[taurendeathknight]

Yep agree, that was clever.

[Deleted]

Mimiron's big red button

[Wilian]

In Ulduar everything just seemed to fit and have a purpose of it's own. The enviroment "reacted" to what players did and if you did do something special, there was explanation for it. For me Ulduar was the peak of WotLK before freefall to darkness and it was far, far better than the boring "switch something in UI box" we have now.

[Youarefired]

In Ulduar everything just seemed to fit and have a purpose of it's own. The enviroment "reacted" to what players did and if you did do something special, there was explanation for it. For me Ulduar was the peak of WotLK before freefall to darkness and it was far, far better than the boring "switch something in UI box" we have now.

It definitely was the peak of Wrath, but I think it was much more... I think it was the peak of the entire game, raiding wise.

Anyways, I think the only encounter after the ones in Ulduar, that was super fun, was Lich King hard mode. Although it was triggered the boring way, it was a great fight.

[Finalwish]

If I had to choose something (other than no hms) i'd go with Ulduar method. Made the boss actually feel different instead of just having a load screen.
Pushing the button or destroying the heart just made bosses seem more epic.

[Gogetaex]

Ulduar method. Best raid instance Blizzard has given us.

[Ralamus]

i don't do that much raiding since BC but ulduar fasho

[Gogetaex]

If I had to choose something (other than no hms) i'd go with Ulduar method. Made the boss actually feel different instead of just having a load screen.
Pushing the button or destroying the heart just made bosses seem more epic.

Hey look! Another FullMetal Alchemist geek who plays mage!

[Champloo]

Hey look! Another FullMetal Alchemist geek who plays mage!

You can throw me in there too.......heh


Anyway, Ulduar and Sarth. Those were the best raiding experiences I've had in this game by far.

[PBitt]

Ulduar mode, if it actually would work. I definetely like the way it is now/during ICC over the ToC crap, though. Anyways, Ulduar hardmodes were fun, it really felt interactive which is half of what made Ulduar so epic IMO. I do like the loot system of the current mode, however, its nice to get more than just one high ilvl piece off of hardmodes. I do feel this method might be kind of hard to put in however, especially since pushing a giant red button that says 'do not push this button' won't work for every encounter. But bosses like XT and Thorim were kinda difficult to avoid doing hardmode (we had to wait in Thorim's tunnel quite a bit to not enable hardmode when we didn't want it for example). But I'm perfectly content with the current mode as well, and I think it works quite well and fairly, minus the heroic lockout issues.

[Fallen Angel]

Ulduar without a doubt. Interactive hard modes vs activated hard modes? I think that would be a non-issue.

[herpecin]

as just about everyone has said, ulduar hands down. i have been a raider since 1.6(or whenever the hell BWL came out i dont remember which patch it was exactly), and ulduar was the most fun.

activated hardmodes are the best way. doesnt have to be a red button, or adds you leave up. something like attacking the big head that omnorton gets its power from to give them more abilities, killing halfus' proto dragon making him super pissed, or pulling theralion instead of valoina so they get different abilities. it makes for greater immersion then simply hitting heroic mode and getting a loading screen.

[Deleted]

definitely ulduar, best system ever. though I liked to have 2 id's for hm and normal.. but well, that's gone anyway with only 1 id for 10 and 25.

[Deleted]

Mimiron's big red button

This! Nothing beats it

[tilgare]

I voted Ulduar style, but to be honest, I think they can do a lot more with ICC+ style because they don't have to worry about also forcing you to trigger the heroic encounter in some way. Now, the trigger could have been simple - you talk to Tirion, option a is normal, option b is heroic.

Also, the Uld style wasn't really something you just understood from the beginning... like, if you walked in there for the first time and had no idea that you were supposed to kill towers, you might be confused when Flame Leviathan wiped the floor with you for a while. Or, perhaps you may not realize you need to send down keepers to Yogg-Saron and of course he'd have some good fun with you too. Now, while I think that learning it all for the very first time was incredibly fun, I can see how that would be somewhat of an issue for a raider that doesn't aim for the top tier. Adding it to the interface made this problem go away by making it an obvious option instead of an obscure method of killing the boss.

I'll also mention, I hated the ToC style.... running ToC sometimes 4 times a week on just my main was terrible. In the beginning (after the gating of course) it was nice to have a little flexibility to be able to clear out the instance on normal but then hop back in and have a good challenge, but it got real old, real quick. Of course, I didn't hit 4 lockouts a week for very long, and once I didn't need the emblems and wasn't inclined to do that, it was nice again to have the ability to run for fun on 25 man, maybe get Insanity attempts in on 25 with the guild, farm mounts on 10, or carry friends and alts in 10 normal. Other than the constant grinding of the same instance, it wasn't so much different from the ICC+ style. I very much like the final simplification in the Cataclysm style allowing for one lockout, period. But I digress.

In short, I really enjoyed the Ulduar style of heroic engagement, but I think ICC+ is a much better system moving forward. It wouldn't be too long before we saw more big red buttons, optional dragons/trees/whatever, etc. Heartbreaker and Thorim using the raid's power to push through into heroic mode was nice, but that too would get tired I feel like.

---------- Post added 2011-03-09 at 02:18 AM ----------

I do like the loot system of the current mode, however, its nice to get more than just one high ilvl piece off of hardmodes.

Oh man, I'd almost forgotten. I DEFINITELY prefer getting ALL heroic loot instead of a few normal pieces and one single heroic piece. I'm also glad we've moved away from normal tokens dropping from tier bosses on heroic (as in ICC), I like the way the tier gear is working right now.

One thing that I loved was the progressively more difficult hard modes which is something we'll never see with our current system. I liked the idea of working up to Steelbreaker (the achievement) or perhaps testing each of the trees in Freya one at a time before putting two together, or another two together, or all three at once. You could pick up an extra piece of gear by leaving one drake up, or you could go all in and handle 3 of them. Yogg had so many different difficulty levels it was awesome.

[Wilian]

Also, the Uld style wasn't really something you just understood from the beginning... like, if you walked in there for the first time and had no idea that you were supposed to kill towers, you might be confused when Flame Leviathan wiped the floor with you for a while. Or, perhaps you may not realize you need to send down keepers to Yogg-Saron and of course he'd have some good fun with you too. Now, while I think that learning it all for the very first time was incredibly fun, I can see how that would be somewhat of an issue for a raider that doesn't aim for the top tier. Adding it to the interface made this problem go away by making it an obvious option instead of an obscure method of killing the boss.

Lot of the hard modes in Ulduar were quite well explained, like the chatter in the very beginning about the orbital defense, quest from the Iron Dwarf counsil and such. And rest would be quite easy to figure out just from checking achievements. It wasn't that hard to figure it out.

[Sarcasm]

Lot of the hard modes in Ulduar were quite well explained, like the chatter in the very beginning about the orbital defense, quest from the Iron Dwarf counsil and such. And rest would be quite easy to figure out just from checking achievements. It wasn't that hard to figure it out.

I think you're underestimating just how bad some players are.

[Coldkil]

Ulduar style was perfect. it required much more effort to design it and probably blizzard scrapped it because it required too much resources compared to the rewards.